I hope everyone will forgive me if I reply to my own original mail and summarise rather than quote certain things that have been said already. My motives for starting this thread in the first place were to try to open up a higher-level discussion about the nature and consequences of a membership system. My original points were that "positional power" doesn't sit well with the open source ethos, and that any wall or boundary separates those inside it from those outside it. It may tend towards creating defensiveness from those on the inside and aggression among those on the outside. It can also create doubt among those on the outside based on lack of confidence ("am I good enough to join?"). These are entirely general and, I think inevitable features of any such system, but I think we've already seen them displayed to a small extent in the discussion so far. Benji makes the point that if there is to be a Board, there needs to be a body that elects that Board, and the membership is the obvious body to do this. It's not been made clear exactly how this will work, but Cornelius objects that there is an obvious problem with any system where a Board is elected by people who have been selected by it. I think he's right, and I think this is an insuperable problem with the system as currently proposed / operating. There are alternatives. 1) Membership open to anyone interested enough to want to be a member. This is common in voluntary organisations, but the obvious objection is that there can be "entryism": a group of people with a particular political agenda all join at the same time to try to change the aims and direction of the organisation. 2) Membership open to anyone interested enough, but with a hurdle of some kind to try to prevent the abuses mentioned in (1). For example a wait of a period of time before membership is granted, a nominal payment for membership, or (and I think this one is promising in this case) a wait together with the possibility of a veto for given reasons (either by members of the Board or a defined number of other members). It has been mentioned that having an email address associated with the project implies that members will be speaking on behalf of the project, which of course it does. That means that if they say things that are deemed to be contrary to the guiding principles or code of conduct, they will have to be disciplined, and, in extreme cases, have their membership revoked. Hence there will have to be a process for doing this. I think there are good reasons for concern about the fallout from any such process, and how this should be handled needs to be thought through now, rather than when it is too late and damage has been done. -- ======================== Roger Whittaker roger@disruptive.org.uk http://disruptive.org.uk ======================== --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org